1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a bridge between tangible media, such as printed media, and computer media. More specifically, the invention is a method and apparatus for hybridizing the subject matter of tangible media with related subject matter in media stored on a computer or related actions accomplished by a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the early 1980s, the popularity of personal computers gave rise to the catch-phrase “paperless office” which refers to an environment in which all records are maintained in digital form on computer readable media as opposed to being kept as hard copies on paper. However, the utility and convenience of paper based records has never been matched by computer media. Thus, even when records are maintained in computer readable format, hard copies are often printed out for review.
Recent advances in communication, the Internet in particular, have facilitated on-line distribution of various information such as articles, advertisements, and even entire books. The Internet is a worldwide network of computers linked together by various hardware communication links all running a standard suite of protocols known as TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol). The growth of the Internet over the last several years has been explosive, fueled in the most part by the widespread use of software viewers known as browsers and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) which allow a simple GUI (graphical user interface) to communicate over the Internet. Browsers generally reside on the computer used to access the Internet, i.e. the client computer. HTTP is a component of TCP/IP and provides users access to files of various formats using a standard page description language known as HTML (hypertext markup language), and more recently XHTML (extensible hypertext markup language) and XML (extensible markup language). The collection of servers on the Internet using HTTP has become known as the “World Wide Web” or simply the “Web.”
Through HTML, and interactive programming protocols, the author of a particular Web page(s) is able to make information available to viewers of the Web page(s) by placing the Web page(s) on an Internet Web server in HTML format. The network path to the server is identified by a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and, generally, any client running a Web browser can access the Web pages by the URL.
The Web has become ubiquitous in businesses and homes because it has proven to be convenient for various applications, such as news and data delivery, conducting banking and investment transactions, and the like. The Web and its authoring, transmission, and display protocols, such as browsers, HTML, CGI (common gateway interface), Active Server Pages™, and Java™, have become a worldwide standard for information exchange.
However, even the convenience of the Web and the advances in the resolution and size of computer displays has not advanced computer media to the level of comfort and convenience of print media in the eyes of most people. For example, computers and computer displays are too bulky to use as a media for reading the morning newspaper. Some modern computers are very small but generally the displays thereon are also small and have low resolution as compared to the typical magazine or newspaper. Also, there is a certain tactile feel to printed media, such as a glossy magazine or a newspaper, which many people prefer over a computer display.
Further, the Web is analogous to the world's biggest library without a card catalogue. A wealth of information is available but difficult to find. Search engines only serve to reduce the amount of material that the user must manually sift through to find the desired document. Also, from an advertiser's standpoint, printed media, such as a magazine, is desirable because it often remains in the reader's possession, in a visible place, for many days and thus advertisements in printed media often are more effective than web site advertisements which are constantly changing and depend on search engines and other unreliable methods for being viewed. Specifically, search engine criterion can change in a dynamic, and even fickle, manner and thus advertisements on the Internet are not viewed in a reliable manner. Accordingly, even the Web and proliferation of laptop and handheld computing devices has not displaced printed media in many instances.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,048, it is well known to download books from a network to a portable or handheld computer. Also, many printed articles and advertisements include a printed URL, i.e. a Web address, to permit readers to access additional information about the article or advertised product by manually accessing the Web. Further, it is well known to download coupons from a computer network, print the coupons on a printer, and take the printed coupons to a retail store for redemption.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,978 discloses a network linking system. Information, such as a URL, is embedded in a data object, such as an image file. Software tools permit the data object to be used as a link to another data object, Web page, or the like. This patent discloses merely a different way of linking computer media to other computer media. This reference does not teach or suggest a link between tangible media, such as printed media, and computer media.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,700 discloses a connection between print media and computer media. A store of information is created specifically for the connection system and categorized. Codes corresponding to the categories of the store are placed in printed media. When a code is entered, the entire category of information is displayed instantly. This patent relates solely to didactic material and is quite limited in how the media is connected. This reference fails to teach or suggest that an independent database can be used to correlate codes to existing specific files or actions. In fact, this patent only discloses that full categories of information can be displayed and does not teach or suggest various actions, such as purchase procedures or the like, can be accomplished in response to entry of a code. Further, because the information disclosed in this patent is in the form of a predefined categorized store, the information is not easily modified or adapted to applications other than education with respect to predefined categories.
There are also known systems in which a code from printed media can be utilized to take the viewer directly and immediately to a related Web page. While these systems do provide a link between printed media and computer media, such systems do not provide temporal control of access, such as later access, to the computer media. Therefore, these systems are not very flexible. For example, such systems are not useful for mobile devices, such as handheld computers, wireless communication devices, personal digital assistants, or the like because the displays thereof are limited in size, color saturation, and resolution.
While each of these technologies incorporates certain aspects of print media and computer media separately, none of these technologies hybridize print media and on-line media in a seamless manner. Finally, the conventional systems fail to permit temporal control of a link between tangible media and computer media.